CONCEPTS TO DEFINE AND APPLY IN YOUR GUS PAPER:
NATIVE: a person who "indigenous to a limited geographical area-a space boundaried by mountains,rivers, or coastline (not by latitudes, longitudes, or state and county lines), with its own peculiar mixture of weeds, trees,bugs, birds, flowers, streams, hills, rocks, and critters (including people), its own nuances of rain, wind, and seasonal change." A person who sees himself or herself as a member of the ecosystem and a key member of the human community. A person who learns from nature's perspective" of the world as well as from other people's perspectives of the world. A person who has faith in himself and the world. A loving, empathetic, faithful, ecocentric, and spiritual person.
NON-NATIVE: a person who "awakes in the morning in a body in a bed in a room in a building on a street in a county in a state in a nation." A person who views nature from an anthropocentric lens and who does not learn from nature nor the people within his or her community. A person without faith in himself nor the world. A non-native rejects his family, companionship, society, and faith / spirituality.
NATIVE INTELLIGENCE: "Native intelligence develops through an unspoken or soft-spoken relationship with the interwoven things (of his natural and human communities): it evolves as the native involves himself in his region." Native intelligence has a grateful and optimistic perspective on family, faith, nature, society, and self.
SIGNPOSTS: experiences, people, stories, conversations, insights that guide a person toward self actualization and faith in the self and the world.
CONCORDIA DISCORS: faith stems from the knowledge of the reconciliation of opposites at any one moment in time, faith in the harmony of disagreeing tensions in the world and self. (i.e. illustrative examples: good and evil, despair and hope, sunlight and darkness, loss and growth, war and peace, faithlessness and faith, sadness and joy, death and new life...)
ANTHROPOCENTRISM: a human centered view of the world that contends that all things in nature serve the needs of humans.
ECOCENTRISM: an ecosystem centered view of the world that contends that all things in nature serve to support the sustainability and viability of the ecosystem.
LAND ETHIC: "a thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise." (Aldo Leopold)
"UNLOOKED FOR HELP": assistance provided a person who is faithless, frustrated, angry, and cynical to save him from his despair and move him toward faith in the self and the world.
SOURCE IS EVERYWHERE 1: a belief that the origin of all natural objects is connected to all other natural objects and has been forming since the beginning of time. A belief that any one natural object is connected in space and time to everything else in an intact ecosystem.
SOURCE IS EVERYWHERE 2: a belief that the origin of all natural objects stems from a divine force and has been present in natural objects since the beginning of time. A belief that any one natural object is connected spiritually in space and time to everything else in an intact ecosystem.
ECOLOGICAL / SPIRITUAL INTERCONECTIVITY: all natural objects are connected to all other natural objects ecologically through interactions in an ecosystem and that all natural objects stem from a divine force since the beginning of time.
PANTHEISM: finding a divine presence or spirit in nature and man.
WISH I KNEW: the desire to quest toward knowledge that will lead to a faith.
FREE WILL: the belief that one's thoughts and actions are the sole factors in one's self-realization.
FATE: the belief that an unknown outside force is the sole factor in one's self-realization.
FREE WILL WITHIN DIVINE PROVIDENCE: the belief that one's thoughts and actions work in conjunction with God's will in the world.
SOUL POLE: the idea that man is essential or "crucial" in the discovery and implementation of Divine Providence
MECCA INSIDE: the idea that one's mind, one's knowledge obtained by becoming conscious of how one perceives the world is a source of faith.
“SEEING---> PERCEIVING---> KNOWING---> ACTION": the process of moving from observing without thought to grasping concepts from observations to acting on this new knowledge
INNER EQUILIBRIUM: a state of mind in which a person resolves inner tensions, in which the "gnawing dissatisfactions" with the self and the world are perceived as valuable and balanced by the undeserved, "unlooked for" epiphanies that lead to faith in the self and the world.
"PLAY THE CHINOOK" AND HOW TO LOVE: the idea that in order to love well one must be content with one's self and patiently approach a relationship as a journey without a destination, without the desire for possession, without "tension", and without "betrayal."